War and Grief
by NightcatMau
Summary: When Valkyrie looses both her parents to cancer she must face a war far more terrible than any she's ever fought in. Set after the novel, so spoilers, obviously. Rated T for sensitive subject matter. One-shot.


A/N: I don't own Valkyrie, her parents, Skulduggery, Erskine, Gordon, Darquesse or anyone else. This is set after the novels so Val is at least in her 20s and there are spoilers. This is rather dark and contains loss for Valkyrie. It was not written for shock value or to be romantic. Because there is nothing romantic about cancer. I lost both my parents to it and this is just me trying to keep the nightmares at bay.

* * *

Valkyrie Cain's life was now a literal nightmare. The two people she loved most in the world, her parents, had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. And being brave, good and decent people they chose to fight the disease, not knowing anything about treatments really outside of a few overly romantic melodramas where the love interest had been dying of cancer.

Valkyrie could have told them something. She could have told them cancer wasn't romantic or a grand adventure. Terminal just meant that all the packets they had received describing treatments - treatments that brought side effects in many ways worse than the cancer itself - was devastating and worse in many ways than Darquesse had ever been. Because they'd tricked Darquesse, hadn't they?

In the end they'd beaten her with guile and cunning. But now? Now there would be no magic to save them. Mortal problems didn't get magic, and although Valkyrie knew this, she fought and fought hard for them. They'd known about magic, after all and now as weeks had rolled into months the end was coming nigh.

And Valkyrie tried very hard not to think of that end, but they all knew it was coming as she'd keep vigil in their room. "I'm sorry, mum. I tried, everything." She said as tears started to roll down her cheeks. And her mum just smiled softly from amid the nest of wires and tubes keeping her dying shell alive. Valkyrie shivered. Both her parents were taking what she called test flights.

Where whatever it was that made them them disappeared and just a lifeless shell remained behind. She even swore she felt them in the mansion with her at times. She kept vigil as she had for months until visiting hours were over and nodded her weary thanks to the nurse who had already called her cab. The hospital staff knew hew now. They treated her as gently as they treated the patients and they knew the worst part for her was going home alone to Gordon's mansion.

Outsiders, people who'd never been through loosing someone to cancer didn't see why family members were fussed over, but the staff did. They had even offered her theraphy but Valkyrie gently refused. This was a war, a war she'd loose in the end, but she remembered fighting loosing battles in the past too. And as for having a mansion, that was stupid people talking.

The big place was a terrible place now. There was no Uncle Gordon, not even an Echo. Valkyrie was alone with splintered and shattered memories she tried to repress of treatment centers. What was worse, Valkyrie had started loosing any faith she had half held onto of any benevolent diety as she sat in those places alongside her parents. No benevolent diety would let people suffer like that.

It was worse than the war and that was no exaggeration. Because she had been watching so many people with no hope go through it all to capture years, or weeks or months. And they struggled and they suffered and they died and this so-called loving God did nothing. And the magical community did nothing too so Valkyrie Cain no longer needed either.

She turned her back on magic, simply stopped using it. At first she trained sporadically to keep her health up, but it is the emotional drain that robs a caregiver of the ability to do anything but see to the needs of those they are protecting and soon she'd given that up too.

And a few weeks later when the end came for them, just like them to die on the same day within minutes of one another, it was her terrible uncle and rotten aunt that took her home and saw her through beginning the terrifying process of the funeral arrangements. And Valkyrie went through these actions automatically.

And she went through the funeral numb, and settled the estate numb, and at last when time had passed and she realized she'd always be alone in that cold and lonely mansion she wept. She wept and felt her anger over being helpless to save them, and her guilt for not saving them. She felt her loneliness too because she seriously doubted she'd ever see them again.

Valkyrie had no idea what to do with herself now and so she constructed a new life. It was as lonely or lonlier than her life had been in America. She kept mostly to herself by choice and she learned the holidays were the worse and if she ever thought she saw a Bentley in the distance or a man in a pinstriped suit she ignored them.

Her parents had died to keep magic hidden. Countless people died every day to keep magic hidden, and she hated magic with a passion now. What good was her magic, or _any_ magic for that matter if it couldn't help people? What good were magical people if they could just stand by and watch mortals suffer and die and not lift a finger to help?

* * *

Valkyrie awoke from the nightmare of the past few years as she always did, shaken and drained. The nightmare of facing her parents death wasn't the worst one. The worst one by far was when they came back and they were all living at home and her parents were still sick and dying but they had come back just to see her. And wasn't that wonderful? Valkyrie felt guilty, sick and terrible as she always did after her nightmares.

To cope, to make it through even one moment at times she had to set her grief and memories of them aside. She'd grieved and grieved hard, admittedly never in front of Skulduggery or the others and on days like these she wondered if it ever got better. "No of course not. Or Skulduggery wouldn't miss his family."

Valkyrie looked up with a start. Echo Gordon was very much alive, well still with her and he'd drifted into the kitchen as she made coffee. "Sorry, but you have that look, and I know it because I lost my parents too, you know. Would a _Hamlet_ help quote?" He asked with a gentle smile and she laughed.

"Not really. Sorry. It's just that they were everything to me. It isn't that I don't love and care about the rest of you. But I just feel so guilty. I have _magic_ , Gordon, there's a whole Sanctuary filled with magic. We could have lied, could have said it just disappeared, it can do that."

He smiled sadly. "Or invented an imaginary clinic? Then what would happen when someone else got cancer and they were frightened and they needed help? Valkyrie, it's the hardest lesson to learn about magic, but it does need protected. You know that. We'd be overrun by people wanting power. There'd be a terrible race to use magic to fuel one last and terrible war..." He trailed off and Valkyrie nodded.

They kew it was true. Mortals when given magic were no better than most mages. Certainly some would seek to heal and cure, but just as many would go to war. And so magic stayed hidden. "Skulduggery's coming over later, I think." Valkyrie murmured and Gordon nodded.

"Good. You need to get back in the field, to do something. You'll be rusty but it will do you some good. He does care you know, they all do." Valkyrie nodded, blinking back sudden tears. They all cared. Erskine had broken down in tears when he'd found out. The Grand Mage of the Irish Sanctuary and he couldn't lift a finger to help.

All the Dead Men had shared her anger and grief. They grieved for her loss, for not being able to help her and Valkyrie realised as she sipped her coffee that she had to be the one to lead the way out of the nightmare and back into the light for all of them. She didn't fancy the idea, but the men already knew she had dark days and terrifying nights, she had to show them she could have something else too.

And as she finished her coffee Valkyrie was in a way, at peace. Alice had passed years ago in a car crash so if there actually was any sort of afterlife she supposed her parents were with her. Valkyrie shoved these thoughts to the side. She'd grieved enough and she knew they were gone and the nightmares would come because that is what nightmares did.

She knew she'd always feel guilty. But she also remembered suddenly as she shrugged into her coat her Mum looking at her one day with determination. "You listen to me." She had said. "You're my daughter and no cure is worth having you hunted down. None, and that's an end of it." Valkyrie smiled at the memory, her mum was as brave as a lioness.

And her dad had been just as brave. All they had wanted was for her to be happy. For her to be loved and happy and they would have been the first to encourage her to move on with her life. Valkyrie blinked back happy tears as she stepped outside the mansion and into the sunlight to wait for Skulduggery.

* * *

 **Life is what it is.**


End file.
